The value of African modernities is that it brings together a range of scholars hailing from different disciplines (anthropology, sociology, history, literature and philosophy), all attempting to think through the paradox of present-day Africa...Since there is no single answer, insights are generated by judicious questioning rather than by simplistic conclusions.

• Introduction - cherished visions and entangled meanings, Jan-George Deutsch et al; West Africa - modernity and modernization, Richard Rathbone; Kenyatta, God and the modern world, John Lonsdale; dislocation, memory and modernity - the prophet Isaiah Shembe and the search for voice and space, Liz Gunner; images of an African modernity - the Likoni Ferry photographers of Mombasa, Kenya, Heike Behrend; governmentality, materiality, legality, modernity - on the colonial state in Africa, John Comaroff; reason, modernity and the African crisis, Simon Gikandi; modernization theory, modernization and African modernities - an outsider's view, Wolfgang Knobl.